7 ms·

You can scream and scream and scream these facts at people for half a century, and they'll still be "startled."

by kahrl 5y ago

gameswithgo 5y ago
Well we have only tried for about 40 years so far, maybe in 10 people will take it seriously?
- willis936 5y ago
  We've only really tried for 0 years. Exxon knew about climate change in 1957 [0]. People beat the drum hard from 1977 to 1990. What's happened? Regulatory capture has only gotten worse. There is nothing to be optimistic about here. 0. https://sci.bban.top/pdf/10.1029/tr038i005p00643.pdf?download=true https://sci.bban.top/pdf/10.1029/tr038i005p00643.pdf?downloa...
  - jimbob45 5y ago
    Nothing? We’re well on the way to making gas-powered vehicles obsolete and nuclear power widespread. I think some level of saying “the sky is falling” is okay but you’re only going to be able to inspire voters with progress - negativity doesn’t win elections.
    - willis936 5y ago
      The negativity is needed because too many people think the sky is not falling. The can has been sufficiently kicked and the problem has become a fact of life. There hasn't been mass mobilizations for climate policy in 30 years. The oil barons won. People need to be fucking angry.
      - hunterb123 5y ago
        Yet people still rail against an EV company because "tweets" and continue to suck on big auto that held us back on purpose because their factories were built for ICE engines, and ya'know, cheated on emission tests. But no, getting angry and emotional is not the answer. We're reducing our emissions, mostly thanks to natural gas (fracking) displacing coal, but part due to alternatives like wind and solar. Some states like Texas run on wind for the full day at times, only tapping into non-renewables during peak loads. We've made great progress and some people need to calm down or they look crazy (some are), diminishing their cause. Some people seem to treat "green" as a religion. The sin you're born with is your carbon footprint. You can do everything and it's still not enough. You have to flagellate yourself, you need to convert everyone else to live your lifestyle, you need to give this and that up. You need to live without electricity, without transportation, without meat, etc. Some positions are counter productive to the cause or are simply useless (banning straws instead of sanctioning foreign countries/companies for dumping plastic waste that they buy from us) Be a conservationist, not an environmentalist. Clean the Earth, make it better, but stop with the doomsday speeches and flagellation.
        nightski 5y ago
        It's as if there aren't multiple issues at play. There can be securities fraud, China level spying on your driving, terrible quality issues (the Model S), and all sorts of other negative things that contrast the good that is Tesla. Spending 30k on a car is a huge financial decision and some people just can't afford to take that decision lightly no matter how much they believe in climate change. For context I own a fair bit of Tesla stock and am a big fan. But I am hesitant to buy one myself, as much as I'd love to.
        wing-_-nuts 5y ago
        The reason people go overboard worrying about their carbon footprint is because fossil fuel companies have a strategy of making global warming 'our' fault, and a consequence of individual action instead of recognizing it's too large of a problem for us to tackle individually. We need government regulation in the form of a carbon tax. Want to drive a dodge viper to work? Knock yourself out. Your carbon taxes will help fund a few KW clean nuclear power.
        hunterb123 5y ago
        Ah yes, more taxes to pay for the taxes and over regulation on nuclear. The fossil fuel companies that you think are out to get you are the only ones actually reducing emissions. Fracking gave access to so much natural gas it displaced coal, reducing emissions year over year. Those energy companies also invest in wind farms, solar, everything. The gov gives out taxpayer money like hotcakes for "green" solutions, why not take advantage?
    - kahrl 5y ago
      Source? Nuclear power is highly unpopular and hanging on by a thread in the United States. Our reactors are in disrepair and do not make a profit without subsidies.
      - mhh__ 5y ago
        Nuclear power is unpopular but sometimes leaders need to lead by doing the unpopular thing, every now and again we get good ones. For all their flaws (and there are many, don't trust a Tory) our government in the UK has done a good-ish job with environmental policy. Not great, but not like the early Trump admin going full retard over fossil fuels, science etc. We even did a carbon tax and it seems to work.
        Sharlin 5y ago
        > Not great, but not like the early Trump admin going full retard over fossil fuels, science etc. It's really concerning if "good-ish" now means "being better than the Trump admin at least"
        ASalazarMX 5y ago
        > Nuclear power is unpopular but sometimes leaders need to lead by doing the unpopular thing The biggest flaw of democracy is that politicians need votes, for them and their party, and getting them is their main objective. They do unpopular things, but make immense efforts to spin it as desirable. Climate change will be properly addressed until the general population suffers from it, and threatens to vote for someone who actually does something. At that point, an emergency state could be declared and the votes won't be as valuable.
        aksss 5y ago
        Was Trump's policy towards nuclear bad? I seem to recall that his admin green-lit in-country efforts that were effectively on ice for quite a while - TREAT, ARDP, the VTR, micro/small reactors, Vogtle approval. And an opening statement from Forbes article in Dec 2020: "By most accounts, President-elect Joe Biden will continue President Trump’s nuclear energy legacy — to aggressively develop U.S. technology for export to the international market within five to seven years." https://www.forbes.com/sites/dipkabhambhani/2020/12/01/biden-to-continue-trump-nuclear-energy-legacy-industry-calls-president-elect-to-open-international-market/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/dipkabhambhani/2020/12/01/biden...
    - this15testing 5y ago
      the drop in emissions we need to not pass 1.5C of warming is not within the time frame of construction/operation of full nuclear power (for the entire world, not just the US). Electric cars exist to (temporarily?) save the auto industry. The decrease we get in purely tailpipe emissions does not offset the supporting infrastructure, their construction, and the sprawl that they demand. Even Exxon is not putting 1.5C targets (where even then a lot of real people die) in their "sustainability" reports anymore. Everything needs to stop at 2030 at the latest, and I personally have no hope that that is possible.
    - jonathankoren 5y ago
      Hitting the brakes, after the car went over the cliff. We broke the planet. About the only we can do is to try to mitigate the damage. However, I don’t have a lot of hope for that. I’ll be fine. My kids might be fine. My grandchildren are screwed.
      - Sharlin 5y ago
        Not even hitting the brakes. We're over the cliff and people are still arguing over whether we should ease on the accelerator a bit and if so, how much.
      - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
        If you are rich, you’ll be fine. If you are poor, you better be lucky, or you’re fucked.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - landemva 5y ago
        Your children will likely be fine. Vikings had pastures on Greenland until global cooling turned it into snow and ice.
    - vkou 5y ago
      > We’re well on the way to making gas-powered vehicles obsolete One out of every 250 vehicles on the road is electric. > nuclear power widespread. We're not. What we're doing is burning natural gas for power generation widespread. We're slightly eased up off the accelerator.
  - twofornone 5y ago
    No one knew about climate change in 1957. It was a theoretical possibility that required decades of research, development, and infrastructure to prove. You're talking about literal terraforming - no one was sure that such a thing was actually possible. And even today we are still discovering novel mechanisms which obscure, regulate, or amplify temperature fluctuations. The case against 195X oil companies is overstated - though it makes for a convenient scapegoat.
    - willis936 5y ago
      What you're saying is directly contradictory to the 1957 article authored by Humble Oil scientists. It's linked above. Also, your points are echoes of (wildly successful) fossil fuel disinformation campaigns. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/resrep00046.7.pdf https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/resrep00046.7.pdf
    - runnerup 5y ago
      In response to: >"No one knew about climate change in 1957." Climate change due to industrial emissions of CO2 has been known and published in mainstream news articles since at least 110 years ago.[0][1] It's been known and discussed in public by professional scientists for over 140 years[2]. The great inaugural Nobel Prize winner, Arrhenius, wrote a paper on the topic in 1896[3] which cited Fourier's publication from 1827[4]. More generally, global greenhouse effect of CO2 has been known for at least 185 years[4], a decade before the last founding father of the United States died. ---------- 0: The Rodney and Otamatea Times (Aug 1912) https://www.livescience.com/63334-coal-affecting-climate-century-ago.html https://www.livescience.com/63334-coal-affecting-climate-cen... 1: Popular Mechanics (Mar 1912): https://books.google.com/books?id=Tt4DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA341&lpg=PA341 https://books.google.com/books?id=Tt4DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA341&lpg=... 2: Nature (1882): https://www.nature.com/articles/027127c0 https://www.nature.com/articles/027127c0 3: Journal of Science (Apr 1896) https://doi.org/10.1080/14786449608620846 https://doi.org/10.1080/14786449608620846 4: M ́emoire sur les Temp ́eratures du Globe Terrestre et des Espaces Plan ́etaires, M ́emoires d l’Acad ́emie Royale des Sciences de l’Institute de France VII 570-604 (1827): https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/Fourier1827Trans.pdf https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/Fourier1827Trans.pd... (English Translation)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
belter 5y ago
Don't look up... https://www.netflix.com/nl-en/title/81252357 https://www.netflix.com/nl-en/title/81252357
- belter 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory
  - lukifer 5y ago
    "How are you so great at resolving questions about comets, when you know nothing about astronomy or orbital mechanics? Presumably because you have the right heuristics, the ones about which authorities to trust and which ones not to. But what are those right heuristics? The writers of Don’t Look Up spend 2 hours 18 minutes demonstrating that they have no idea and can’t even keep their answer consistent from one moment to the next." https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/movie-review-dont-look-up https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/movie-review-dont-look...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jmnicolas 5y ago
We're just bombarded with fear every day, even more so since COVID. More often than not it's BS (example in the 70's they feared that we would freeze to death by year 2000). At one point the brain (at least mine) just lets go and tries to focus on something less draining. We (humans) are just slightly evolved monkeys. We can rationalize all we want, our decisions are taken based on emotions. We have built a much more complex world than we can really handle.
- markoman 5y ago
  Why is it that those who want to fear monger about the current inflation and how long it will last are so resistant to the fears about sea level rise? Wait until its determined how high the loss in real estate (especially as a tax base) will be with the sea a foot higher by 2050. Think of areas, especially Miami, that are in for serious impact without any mitigation plans.
  - gremlinsinc 5y ago
    People who hate to fear monger sure tend to horde guns, it's almost like they're afraid of something, so they have all these guns for protection... if there wasn't anything to fear, there wouldn't be a need for guns other than maybe sport/hunting related. If they're not afraid, then maybe we can also start spending less on military and police because the world is safe-enough that we don't need to waste so much $$ on police force, etc... which often are the ones creating or escalating problems in society. People love to blame BLM for destruction of property but guess how many riots there'd be if cops weren't allowed to murder people and get away with it, a hell of a lot less or if schools taught about things like the bombing of Black Wallstreet... It's definitely a double standard... don't fear monger unless it involved a bigger police state for our protection, more guns - also for our protection, or bigotry (who to be afraid of and why...)... Another commenter claimed science is often off about climate but lately I've been hearing how they're only wrong in that they under-predicted because to actually tell the truth is to scare the shit out of people and start panics or piss off business interests that pay money to the universities where they work, etc...
agumonkey 5y ago
There's an undescribable absurdism of this era. People have data, history, sociology, models, medias. You make conferences, reports, warnings, yet the sad prophecy still lands just as remembered. It's like Hofstadter's law applied to catastrophe.
- ur-whale 5y ago
  > There's an undescribable absurdism of this era. One observation I've made time and again throughout my life: a large chunk people live their life using a very simple, greedy algorithm (not as in greed, but greedy in the sense algo theory): deal with problems when they appear, and don't think about them until they do. This is why people build houses in the path of lava erupting from a volcano: it's never an issue until it becomes one. The smaller portion of folks who do plan ahead (because they are capable of it) and anticipate problems before they occur is the portion that gets ahead. I don't think this is something that is specific to this era.
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    Sure, it's happened since the dawn of humanity. What is different is that we have tools and structures that are leagues ahead of any previous era. Stats, math, communication, everything is up to 11, and yet it doesn't affect much of the social response.
- lukifer 5y ago
  I'm always reminded of Kubrick's comments on the risk of nuclear weapons: "People react primarily to direct experience and not to abstractions; it is very rare to find anyone who can become emotionally involved with an abstraction. The longer the bomb is around without anything happening, the better the job that people do in psychologically denying its existence. It has become as abstract as the fact that we are all going to die someday, which we usually do an excellent job of denying." [0] That last bit invokes some of the research behind Terror Management Theory: first and foremost, we are wired to avoid risks to our survival. But that drive is mediated by subjective qualia: avoiding mortal fear. The best way to do that is to prevent circumstances of immediate danger: don't poke the bear, don't play near the edge of a cliff. But when it comes to dangers of limited individual agency (systemic risk, black swans), it makes complete sense that evolution would select for "try not to think about it". [0] https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/11/27/jeremy-bernstein-stanley-kubrick-interview/ https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/11/27/jeremy-bernstein-s...
johnRando 5y ago
Based on the track record of historical climate predictions, it is rational to be surprised if one turns out to be accurate. Predictions are not facts, and they have been screaming them for decades. They have consistently been inaccurate, and tainted by political influences. There is good science on climate change, but there is also a lot of bad science on it, specifically in terms of future projections.

You can scream and scream and scream these facts at people for half a century, and they'll still be "startled."

by kahrl 5y ago

You can scream and scream and scream these facts at people for half a century, and they'll still be "startled."

gameswithgo 5y ago

Well we have only tried for about 40 years so far, maybe in 10 people will take it seriously?

willis936 5y ago
We've only really tried for 0 years. Exxon knew about climate change in 1957 [0]. People beat the drum hard from 1977 to 1990. What's happened? Regulatory capture has only gotten worse. There is nothing to be optimistic about here. 0. https://sci.bban.top/pdf/10.1029/tr038i005p00643.pdf?download=true https://sci.bban.top/pdf/10.1029/tr038i005p00643.pdf?downloa...
- jimbob45 5y ago
  Nothing? We’re well on the way to making gas-powered vehicles obsolete and nuclear power widespread. I think some level of saying “the sky is falling” is okay but you’re only going to be able to inspire voters with progress - negativity doesn’t win elections.
  - willis936 5y ago
    The negativity is needed because too many people think the sky is not falling. The can has been sufficiently kicked and the problem has become a fact of life. There hasn't been mass mobilizations for climate policy in 30 years. The oil barons won. People need to be fucking angry.
    - hunterb123 5y ago
      Yet people still rail against an EV company because "tweets" and continue to suck on big auto that held us back on purpose because their factories were built for ICE engines, and ya'know, cheated on emission tests. But no, getting angry and emotional is not the answer. We're reducing our emissions, mostly thanks to natural gas (fracking) displacing coal, but part due to alternatives like wind and solar. Some states like Texas run on wind for the full day at times, only tapping into non-renewables during peak loads. We've made great progress and some people need to calm down or they look crazy (some are), diminishing their cause. Some people seem to treat "green" as a religion. The sin you're born with is your carbon footprint. You can do everything and it's still not enough. You have to flagellate yourself, you need to convert everyone else to live your lifestyle, you need to give this and that up. You need to live without electricity, without transportation, without meat, etc. Some positions are counter productive to the cause or are simply useless (banning straws instead of sanctioning foreign countries/companies for dumping plastic waste that they buy from us) Be a conservationist, not an environmentalist. Clean the Earth, make it better, but stop with the doomsday speeches and flagellation.
      - nightski 5y ago
        It's as if there aren't multiple issues at play. There can be securities fraud, China level spying on your driving, terrible quality issues (the Model S), and all sorts of other negative things that contrast the good that is Tesla. Spending 30k on a car is a huge financial decision and some people just can't afford to take that decision lightly no matter how much they believe in climate change. For context I own a fair bit of Tesla stock and am a big fan. But I am hesitant to buy one myself, as much as I'd love to.
      - wing-_-nuts 5y ago
        The reason people go overboard worrying about their carbon footprint is because fossil fuel companies have a strategy of making global warming 'our' fault, and a consequence of individual action instead of recognizing it's too large of a problem for us to tackle individually. We need government regulation in the form of a carbon tax. Want to drive a dodge viper to work? Knock yourself out. Your carbon taxes will help fund a few KW clean nuclear power.
        hunterb123 5y ago
        Ah yes, more taxes to pay for the taxes and over regulation on nuclear. The fossil fuel companies that you think are out to get you are the only ones actually reducing emissions. Fracking gave access to so much natural gas it displaced coal, reducing emissions year over year. Those energy companies also invest in wind farms, solar, everything. The gov gives out taxpayer money like hotcakes for "green" solutions, why not take advantage?
  - kahrl 5y ago
    Source? Nuclear power is highly unpopular and hanging on by a thread in the United States. Our reactors are in disrepair and do not make a profit without subsidies.
    - mhh__ 5y ago
      Nuclear power is unpopular but sometimes leaders need to lead by doing the unpopular thing, every now and again we get good ones. For all their flaws (and there are many, don't trust a Tory) our government in the UK has done a good-ish job with environmental policy. Not great, but not like the early Trump admin going full retard over fossil fuels, science etc. We even did a carbon tax and it seems to work.
      - Sharlin 5y ago
        > Not great, but not like the early Trump admin going full retard over fossil fuels, science etc. It's really concerning if "good-ish" now means "being better than the Trump admin at least"
      - ASalazarMX 5y ago
        > Nuclear power is unpopular but sometimes leaders need to lead by doing the unpopular thing The biggest flaw of democracy is that politicians need votes, for them and their party, and getting them is their main objective. They do unpopular things, but make immense efforts to spin it as desirable. Climate change will be properly addressed until the general population suffers from it, and threatens to vote for someone who actually does something. At that point, an emergency state could be declared and the votes won't be as valuable.
      - aksss 5y ago
        Was Trump's policy towards nuclear bad? I seem to recall that his admin green-lit in-country efforts that were effectively on ice for quite a while - TREAT, ARDP, the VTR, micro/small reactors, Vogtle approval. And an opening statement from Forbes article in Dec 2020: "By most accounts, President-elect Joe Biden will continue President Trump’s nuclear energy legacy — to aggressively develop U.S. technology for export to the international market within five to seven years." https://www.forbes.com/sites/dipkabhambhani/2020/12/01/biden-to-continue-trump-nuclear-energy-legacy-industry-calls-president-elect-to-open-international-market/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/dipkabhambhani/2020/12/01/biden...
  - this15testing 5y ago
    the drop in emissions we need to not pass 1.5C of warming is not within the time frame of construction/operation of full nuclear power (for the entire world, not just the US). Electric cars exist to (temporarily?) save the auto industry. The decrease we get in purely tailpipe emissions does not offset the supporting infrastructure, their construction, and the sprawl that they demand. Even Exxon is not putting 1.5C targets (where even then a lot of real people die) in their "sustainability" reports anymore. Everything needs to stop at 2030 at the latest, and I personally have no hope that that is possible.
  - jonathankoren 5y ago
    Hitting the brakes, after the car went over the cliff. We broke the planet. About the only we can do is to try to mitigate the damage. However, I don’t have a lot of hope for that. I’ll be fine. My kids might be fine. My grandchildren are screwed.
    - Sharlin 5y ago
      Not even hitting the brakes. We're over the cliff and people are still arguing over whether we should ease on the accelerator a bit and if so, how much.
    - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
      If you are rich, you’ll be fine. If you are poor, you better be lucky, or you’re fucked.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - landemva 5y ago
      Your children will likely be fine. Vikings had pastures on Greenland until global cooling turned it into snow and ice.
  - vkou 5y ago
    > We’re well on the way to making gas-powered vehicles obsolete One out of every 250 vehicles on the road is electric. > nuclear power widespread. We're not. What we're doing is burning natural gas for power generation widespread. We're slightly eased up off the accelerator.
- twofornone 5y ago
  No one knew about climate change in 1957. It was a theoretical possibility that required decades of research, development, and infrastructure to prove. You're talking about literal terraforming - no one was sure that such a thing was actually possible. And even today we are still discovering novel mechanisms which obscure, regulate, or amplify temperature fluctuations. The case against 195X oil companies is overstated - though it makes for a convenient scapegoat.
  - willis936 5y ago
    What you're saying is directly contradictory to the 1957 article authored by Humble Oil scientists. It's linked above. Also, your points are echoes of (wildly successful) fossil fuel disinformation campaigns. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/resrep00046.7.pdf https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/resrep00046.7.pdf
  - runnerup 5y ago
    In response to: >"No one knew about climate change in 1957." Climate change due to industrial emissions of CO2 has been known and published in mainstream news articles since at least 110 years ago.[0][1] It's been known and discussed in public by professional scientists for over 140 years[2]. The great inaugural Nobel Prize winner, Arrhenius, wrote a paper on the topic in 1896[3] which cited Fourier's publication from 1827[4]. More generally, global greenhouse effect of CO2 has been known for at least 185 years[4], a decade before the last founding father of the United States died. ---------- 0: The Rodney and Otamatea Times (Aug 1912) https://www.livescience.com/63334-coal-affecting-climate-century-ago.html https://www.livescience.com/63334-coal-affecting-climate-cen... 1: Popular Mechanics (Mar 1912): https://books.google.com/books?id=Tt4DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA341&lpg=PA341 https://books.google.com/books?id=Tt4DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA341&lpg=... 2: Nature (1882): https://www.nature.com/articles/027127c0 https://www.nature.com/articles/027127c0 3: Journal of Science (Apr 1896) https://doi.org/10.1080/14786449608620846 https://doi.org/10.1080/14786449608620846 4: M ́emoire sur les Temp ́eratures du Globe Terrestre et des Espaces Plan ́etaires, M ́emoires d l’Acad ́emie Royale des Sciences de l’Institute de France VII 570-604 (1827): https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/Fourier1827Trans.pdf https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/Fourier1827Trans.pd... (English Translation)

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

belter 5y ago

Don't look up... https://www.netflix.com/nl-en/title/81252357 https://www.netflix.com/nl-en/title/81252357

belter 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory
- lukifer 5y ago
  "How are you so great at resolving questions about comets, when you know nothing about astronomy or orbital mechanics? Presumably because you have the right heuristics, the ones about which authorities to trust and which ones not to. But what are those right heuristics? The writers of Don’t Look Up spend 2 hours 18 minutes demonstrating that they have no idea and can’t even keep their answer consistent from one moment to the next." https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/movie-review-dont-look-up https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/movie-review-dont-look...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jmnicolas 5y ago

We're just bombarded with fear every day, even more so since COVID. More often than not it's BS (example in the 70's they feared that we would freeze to death by year 2000). At one point the brain (at least mine) just lets go and tries to focus on something less draining. We (humans) are just slightly evolved monkeys. We can rationalize all we want, our decisions are taken based on emotions. We have built a much more complex world than we can really handle.

markoman 5y ago
Why is it that those who want to fear monger about the current inflation and how long it will last are so resistant to the fears about sea level rise? Wait until its determined how high the loss in real estate (especially as a tax base) will be with the sea a foot higher by 2050. Think of areas, especially Miami, that are in for serious impact without any mitigation plans.
- gremlinsinc 5y ago
  People who hate to fear monger sure tend to horde guns, it's almost like they're afraid of something, so they have all these guns for protection... if there wasn't anything to fear, there wouldn't be a need for guns other than maybe sport/hunting related. If they're not afraid, then maybe we can also start spending less on military and police because the world is safe-enough that we don't need to waste so much $$ on police force, etc... which often are the ones creating or escalating problems in society. People love to blame BLM for destruction of property but guess how many riots there'd be if cops weren't allowed to murder people and get away with it, a hell of a lot less or if schools taught about things like the bombing of Black Wallstreet... It's definitely a double standard... don't fear monger unless it involved a bigger police state for our protection, more guns - also for our protection, or bigotry (who to be afraid of and why...)... Another commenter claimed science is often off about climate but lately I've been hearing how they're only wrong in that they under-predicted because to actually tell the truth is to scare the shit out of people and start panics or piss off business interests that pay money to the universities where they work, etc...

agumonkey 5y ago

There's an undescribable absurdism of this era. People have data, history, sociology, models, medias. You make conferences, reports, warnings, yet the sad prophecy still lands just as remembered. It's like Hofstadter's law applied to catastrophe.

ur-whale 5y ago
> There's an undescribable absurdism of this era. One observation I've made time and again throughout my life: a large chunk people live their life using a very simple, greedy algorithm (not as in greed, but greedy in the sense algo theory): deal with problems when they appear, and don't think about them until they do. This is why people build houses in the path of lava erupting from a volcano: it's never an issue until it becomes one. The smaller portion of folks who do plan ahead (because they are capable of it) and anticipate problems before they occur is the portion that gets ahead. I don't think this is something that is specific to this era.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  Sure, it's happened since the dawn of humanity. What is different is that we have tools and structures that are leagues ahead of any previous era. Stats, math, communication, everything is up to 11, and yet it doesn't affect much of the social response.
lukifer 5y ago
I'm always reminded of Kubrick's comments on the risk of nuclear weapons: "People react primarily to direct experience and not to abstractions; it is very rare to find anyone who can become emotionally involved with an abstraction. The longer the bomb is around without anything happening, the better the job that people do in psychologically denying its existence. It has become as abstract as the fact that we are all going to die someday, which we usually do an excellent job of denying." [0] That last bit invokes some of the research behind Terror Management Theory: first and foremost, we are wired to avoid risks to our survival. But that drive is mediated by subjective qualia: avoiding mortal fear. The best way to do that is to prevent circumstances of immediate danger: don't poke the bear, don't play near the edge of a cliff. But when it comes to dangers of limited individual agency (systemic risk, black swans), it makes complete sense that evolution would select for "try not to think about it". [0] https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/11/27/jeremy-bernstein-stanley-kubrick-interview/ https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/11/27/jeremy-bernstein-s...

johnRando 5y ago

Based on the track record of historical climate predictions, it is rational to be surprised if one turns out to be accurate. Predictions are not facts, and they have been screaming them for decades. They have consistently been inaccurate, and tainted by political influences. There is good science on climate change, but there is also a lot of bad science on it, specifically in terms of future projections.